


crimson

by verbatiim



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Canon Compliant, Gen, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, Murder, Revenge, Synesthesia, heavy repetition, literally just oni genji killing the shimada clan, technically, thanks for your time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-12 13:58:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15341340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verbatiim/pseuds/verbatiim
Summary: Red is the fear of something you knew was coming but didn’t know how to stop.





	crimson

Red are the slashes cutting across his skin, welted where they heal and rippling with pain. The heat in his cheeks, the popped vessels in his eyes, the spaces between his teeth where he bit his tongue and his mouth overflowed. Anger burns in his irises. For pain and sadness can only last so long, being miserable becomes something else. Something ugly. Something that makes him unable to bear the pain on his own any longer, and why should he have to? There are people who deserve to feel it. Dozens of them. Handfuls of men who sleep at night in _his_ home, quiet, content, as if he were not but a corpse rotting in the forest. Mushrooms could sprout from his skin and he would still return.

Red is the eye of the oni. Masks are carved in realistic depictions of the yōkai, _for kabuki_ , the merchant insisted. Horns and teeth and bulging corneas. Unsettling. Perhaps they are not always evil. Hidden, concealed. Dead. Forgiving. But he was no ancestral spirit, and dishonour does not yield forgiveness.

Red are the gates of the castle. The wax of the candles and the incense burning and the inner cavities of the flowers falling from trees. The last of them. Barren branches and petal guts. He remembers, crudely, when it was his intestines spilling onto these floors. Red were his clothes and his hands and the blade his brother pulled from his chest. He woke up choking on red and smelling like red and all he could see was a scarlet image of betrayal painted behind his eyelids, bright fiery sunset of Switzerland outside of the window, black cherry bags hanging from metal stands, pumping pretty rubies into his veins to make up for what he lost.

Red is the fear of something you knew was coming but didn’t know how to stop. He should have been prepared, should not be this angry. Time heals all wounds, they say, but his are fresh. Ripped open anew every day for two years, pulling and seething and oozing and festering. And maybe he returned just to scare them. To make them fear the shadows that lurk, let them turn over their shoulders and check the dark corridors at night. Onigawara could only ward off so much. He could hurt them, just a little. Just to make them remember. Just to make them regret. Just snap a few fingers and just leave a few bruises and _just_ —

Red are their throats.

Red are their clothes.

Red are the floors.

Red pools at his feet and stains his sword and it smells like blood and it’s _everywhere_ , brutal, a massacre, shiny and wet and his chest heaves. It doesn’t feel good. Why doesn’t it feel good? They hurt him, they’re dead, why doesn’t it feel _good?_

Red were the elder’s lips when he beckoned. _Closer, demon_. A sardonic smile. A knowing grin. The ribbon came undone with ease, the oni released, and Genji snarled with hot wetness in his red, red eyes. His uncle laughed with his last breath.

“Upset that Hanzo wasn’t here, eh?”

Red is the trembling of his body, warm and overbearing and never ceasing.

“We killed him, too.”

Red are the siren lights. Red are the back alleys and the street corners and the taxis and his hotel room walls, bought on stolen money. Red are his palms. Red as he looks in the mirror, red as he calls his Commander, red when he arrives back on the base.

He doesn’t leave again until he is nearly thirty years old, scared of the outside world and what he has done to it and what he has become.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm sorry all i write is weird shitty meta posts about genji
> 
> [[ALSO to clarify, they didn't actually kill hanzo he lied to genji to make him angry. i'll probably write something like my version of the dragons cinematic at some point because i be like that]]


End file.
